The third edit is done and back to the editor, I’m really happy with the changes I’ve made and think I’m very close to having a finished book now. But I also enjoyed the way I went about making changes for this edit.
As mentioned in my previous post about editing, there were a bunch of words and phrases that I overused in the second edit. My plan for the third edit was to add more description for the characters, deal with the unintentional racism stuff, and deal with the repetitive phrases.
I did this by simply searching through the book for all instances of a certain phrase I used, and looking at them in turn, and changing/editing section/leaving alone as appropriate. What surprised me was how liberating I found the whole process.
Because I was jumping around the book from line to line, it allowed me a fresh look at it all as I was looking at them in isolation. I wasn’t going through the book page by page and editing as I go, so I got to see them in their own context separate from the book as a whole. This allowed me to make changes I think I may have been unwilling to make if I’d been reading through, and has helped trim/tighten up a lot of the sentences and improve the flow of Oranje a lot.
I think for the fourth edit I will do something similar by reading the book in reverse, this time to take a look at each sentence in the book. Reading in reverse will give me a chance to do what I did for certain phrases, but throughout the story.
The finish line for Oranje is close, and the third edit was a very big step towards. I can’t wait to finish it.